


Flesh Damage

by ivorydice



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Corpses, Fear of Death, Gen, Horror, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Shameless use of tropes, Swearing, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 21:59:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorydice/pseuds/ivorydice
Summary: The house seemed to have every cliche Noctis could think of, and he wasn’t sure if it was something to be impressed by while simply carrying on with their job, or if they should actually follow Prompto’s paranoid rambling advice and turn around to leave.Their latest daemon hunt has Noctis and his friends venturing into an abandoned, decrepit house, only for things to quickly fall apart around them in a fight for survival.





	Flesh Damage

**Author's Note:**

> "I don't care about Halloween!" I say, as I write and post a horror fic especially for this spoopy time of year.
> 
> Yes, that's right my friends. I'm posting a fic around a week later after my previous fic was posted. We're in the upside down here.
> 
> I deeply _apologise_ for the size of this fic and for it being in one single chapter. It didn't feel right breaking it up, at all, so we'll just have to make do with this I'm afraid. That said, I had some hella fun writing this.
> 
> So, since it's so long, grab a drink, grab a snack, whatever, settle in and, most of all, enjoy!
> 
> Shout out to the Silent Hill 1 soundtrack for not only fuelling my paranoia, but also providing some amazing spoopy background music to write this to. ~~I spooped myself while revising a particular scene I'm so embarrassed~~
> 
> Shout out to AO3 and google docs for working against me and messing with the formatting and _not saving the changes I made when I pressed save GOD DAMN IT IT TOOK ME SO MANY HOURS_. Fun times :D
> 
>  **Note:** I rated this mature just to be on the safe side, even though it's tame in my books. If you feel like I've missed any tags, feel free to let me know!
> 
> Okay, shutting up now, byeeeee. Enjoyyyyyy.

  
  
The house seemed to have every cliche Noctis could think of, and he wasn’t sure if it was something to be impressed by while simply carrying on with their job, or if they should actually follow Prompto’s paranoid rambling advice and turn around to leave.  
  
It stood on a hill, solitary, _lonely_ , past a decrepit iron gate and crumbling stone walls that did little to keep trespassers out. The surrounding trees creaked and groaned, thin branches waving like skeletal hands in the breeze. Above, clouds were slowly devouring the full moon, trying to shield its light away from the rest of the world.  
  
Maybe it was just the way the shadows were cast over the house, but the place certainly didn’t look very inviting. But they had already driven this far out, they were parked and ready to go. So why turn back now when their hunt was merely meters away?  
  
“I am _not_ going in there,” Prompto said, firm and sounding just a little scared.  
  
Gladio thumped the back of his seat. “Oh, you’re going in, alright. Are you a part of this team or not?”  
  
“Uh,” Prompto’s tone was more indignant this time, “If the team is out of their damn minds and stepping into an obvious death trap, then _hell_ no I’m not.”  
  
Ignis chuckled. “It’s not that terrible. You’re being a tad paranoid here.”  
  
“Are we looking at the same house?” Prompto gestured wildly to the scene beyond the car windows. “That’s a _murder house_. That is a house where murders happen. But not today. Nuh-uh. No way.”  
  
Noctis rolled his eyes, quitting his game of King’s Knight and leaning forward to peer round the seat at him. “You remember that we have a _job_ to do, right? We promised Dave?”  
  
He received a hopeful look in return. “We can always _un_ promise him.”  
  
“Not if we wanna get paid.”  
  
“And if we don’t get paid,” Gladio chimed in, his voice taking on a smug tone, “Then we have to go camping. You know, instead of that nice, plushy motel bed you were dreaming of earlier?”  
  
Prompto groaned loudly, slouching down in his seat, practically pouting.  
  
Noctis grinned. “Come on, it’s not gonna be so bad. We just take a trip into the murder house, get this job done, and then we can put it all behind us. No big deal.”  
  
“Yeah, right, no big deal,” Prompto snorted. “Try saying that when you’re chained up in the murder basement waiting to get tortured.”  
  
Noctis could only roll his eyes, climbing out of the car before he could launch into another spiel about why ‘this was the worst job they’d ever taken’. They’d already listened to three of those on the journey out here. No more.  
  
Ignis and Gladio followed suite, doors slamming closed on more of Prompto’s rambling.  
  
“You’d think he’s never been on a daemon hunt before,” Gladio muttered, lips quirking upwards.  
  
Noctis shrugged, looking over at the house nearby. “It does look pretty creepy.”  
  
“I think it could be rather nice,” Ignis said. “A touch of paint here and there, get rid of that awful iron gate. It could be a quaint place to live.”  
  
“Right,” Gladio rolled his eyes. “Can we get rid of this daemon first before you set yourself on moving in?”  
  
The glare Ignis gave him was rather spectacular, but he said nothing as they began preparing for the hunt. Prompto joined them reluctantly, still muttering to himself, and the four of them huddled around each other against the wind as they checked inventory.  
  
Once they found they each had a decent amount of curatives stored away, they stepped back.  
  
“Alright,” Gladio said. “Let’s go.”  
  
Noctis wasn’t sure why it was called a manor by those who referred to it; it seemed a little small to be deemed as such, only two floors high and not very wide. And yet it seemed strangely imposing as they approached and made their way towards the main steps, like it was looming over them and growing taller and taller with every second.  
  
The windows were pitch black and showing nothing but an empty void inside, shadows falling across the cracked paint and rotting wood in strange ways. Branches of the tree in front of the house clawed at one of the window panes on the second floor, like fingers scratching to get inside.  
  
There were dead birds lying on the grass around the house. Just a few, here and there, in various stages of decay. As if they’d just dropped out of the sky one day and had been left there to rot. As if any animals wandering around didn’t dare touch them, not even for food.  
  
“Ugh,” Prompto stared at them in disgust. “Poor things.”  
  
Noctis could only nod. He tugged on the elbow of Prompto’s jacket, getting him into gear again. “Come on.”  
  
They took the stairs one by one, careful and aware of the rotting wood under their shoes. The front doors creaked terribly as they were opened, loud noises that Noctis wincing as they stepped past and made their way into the dark and dusty foyer.  
  
It was quiet inside, so still that every footstep they took felt like gunshots to his ears.  
  
“Lights on, fellas,” Noctis said.  
  
“Okay,” Prompto said, spinning around in a circle with his light on, taking the whole place in, “it’s even creepier on the inside. What are we looking for again?”  
  
“A revenant,” Ignis replied.  
  
“Right. And what’s one of those?”  
  
“A daemon.”  
  
“Right. Haha, so helpful.”  
  
Noctis stepped around the foyer, taking in what little he could see with his flashlight hooked to his jacket. Everything was just so _dark_ , even with the small windows behind them on either side of the front door.  
  
The wallpaper was peeling off in more than one place, sometimes hanging in strips that curled over. There was only two doors, one on either side of them, and a staircase along the wall opposite the main doors, lining against the left wall and crawling up and around. Noctis stood beside them, looking upwards, but his flashlight couldn’t make out the ceiling above and it barely touched the railing on the next floor.  
  
There was a painting on the right wall. Large, peeling and cracked in places, faded faces peering out at them. Noctis stared up at it. It looked old, a lot older than he’d expected, their clothes reminiscent of fashions at least a hundred years gone.  
  
A man and a woman, both stiff looking even while sitting in chairs, faces serious, and a little girl sat with them. A line of men and women in uniform stood behind, their backs straight, shoulders up. They’d probably been the servants, whenever they had lived in this place.  
  
Noctis let his light shine on the little girl, at the doll she held in her hands. It looked just like her, with its golden curls and round cheeks.  
  
“Creepy,” Prompto appeared beside him, shuddering exaggeratedly. “Dolls are the worst.”  
  
Noctis struggled to contain his amused smile. “Yeah.” He let his light linger on the face of the doll. “Something about their eyes, I guess. They’re so...lifeless.”  
  
“Seriously. If that were my doll, I’d burn it in a heartbeat.”  
  
Behind them, the front doors slammed shut. The bang echoed off the walls, and Prompto was crying out, falling back into Noctis as he whirled around. Noctis looked past him, ready to yell at Ignis or Gladio, but they looked just as startled and neither one of them were standing anywhere near the doors.  
  
Prompto made a small noise. “What was that? What the hell did that?”  
  
“Calm down,” Gladio shot him a look. “It was probably just the wind.”  
  
“Oh right, the _wind_ ,” Prompto glared back at him. “The wind that’s _totally_ blowing through here. You sure it wasn’t a freaking ghost?”  
  
Noctis rolled his eyes. “Come on, ghosts aren’t real.”  
  
“Really?” Prompto turned on him this time, eyes disbelieving. “Are _you_ really gonna say that? You, who gets stabbed by the ghost swords of your dead ancestors?”  
  
“Hey,” Noctis had to smother another smile, shoving him away, “that’s the royal line. Show some respect.”  
  
As Prompto shoved him back, Ignis’s voice drifted over to them. “It’s about time we get to work, wouldn’t you say?”  
  
Gladio had unclipped his flashlight, holding it up to shine it along the dark and dusty walls, the doors, the staircase. “Alright. We only have so long until the sun rises,” he said. “I say we cut the time down by splitting up. Noct, you and Prompto take the right wing. Iggy and I’ll take the left.”  
  
“Hey, now!” Prompto snapped, hand held up, finger pointing at him. “Why would we split up? That is _worst_ idea. Iggy, tell him it’s the worst idea.”  
  
Ignis, as patient as he could be, was beginning to get that suffering look on his face. “Gladio has a point, we only have so long until dawn arrives. You wouldn’t want to have to come back here again tomorrow night, would you?”  
  
“I don’t care,” Prompto said. “We can come back every night for the rest of our lives if we have to.”  
  
Noctis nudged him. “Thought you didn’t like the murder house.”  
  
“I don’t! But anything’s better than splitting up, that’s like the number one rule you _don’t_ break. That’s what gets people killed in horror movies, man,” here, he slapped the back of his hand into his other palm as he iterated each word, “—You. Don’t. Split. Up.”  
  
Gladio was staring at him, seemingly halfway between exasperated and unimpressed. “Yeah, we’re splittin’ up, otherwise what’ll get you killed will be _me_.”  
  
Noctis could barely hold back a snort of amusement. “Come on,” he said. He grabbed Prompto by the shoulder, shoving him towards the door to the right wing. “Let’s just get this over with. Don’t forget to put your earpieces on, guys.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Gladio waved him off, already heading for the opposite door.  
  
Ignis gave Noctis a lingering look. “Be careful.”  
  
Noctis nodded. “Absolutely.” He squeezed Prompto’s shoulder, pushing harder when he felt him struggle. “Come _on_ , Prompto.”  
  
“We shouldn’t be splitting up!” Prompto said, but he followed along anyway, feet trudging, shoulders slumped in defeat.  
  
“It’s alright, we’re still in groups of two. Not completely split up.” He let go of Prompto’s arm. “Let’s just get this over with, and then we’ll find a nice motel to crash in after.”  
  
“Oh my god, a shower,” Prompto groaned.  
  
Noctis chuckled. “That’s the spirit. Come on, earpieces in. Game on.”  
  
  
~&~  
  
  
They walked in silence once they had their earpieces in and switched on, although they kept them on mute for now. Gladio’s patience had been worn down enough with Prompto’s paranoia, and Noctis didn’t have the heart to put him through it again so soon.  
  
The corridor they stepped into was _dark_ , dust particles lighting up like glitter in the beams of their flashlights. He didn’t know how long this house had been abandoned, but the wooden floors and the torn wallpaper on the walls looked rotten. Oil paintings were hanging precariously, their pictures faded and ripped apart and stained. Pots had been overturned, plants long wilted and dead.  
  
“So,” Prompto murmured after a while, as if he was loath to break the thick silence that had fallen over them, “a revenant, huh?”  
  
“That’s what Dave said,” Noctis muttered back. He approached the first door, directly opposite the one they’d just come through, and turned the handle with a grimace. His fingers came back dusty and grimy, and he wiped them on his jeans with a disgusted groan.  
  
He pushed the door open slowly, wincing at its loud creak. They stepped inside, flashlights shining over old furniture, dusty couches and bookshelves. There was a large window in this room, one of the front windows, and moonlight shone in too, casting strange rays and shadows over everything.  
  
“What _is_ a revenant?” Prompto asked. “Do we know?”  
  
“Dave didn’t say much about it,” Noctis shrugged and shook his head. There was a piano over by the window, but its keys were broken and made no sound when he pressed down on them. “We know that it likes to hide away, so _we_ have to go looking for _it_ if we want to kill it.”  
  
“That’s different. Great.” Prompto let out a sigh. “Guess we don’t have to worry about it randomly jumping out at us then?”  
  
“That’s the dream,” Noctis answered. He glanced over at Prompto, watching him wipe his dusty finger over his jacket with a scrunched nose. “Weren’t you there when we accepted the job? Were you listening?”  
  
Prompto grinned sheepishly. “Nah, I was watching this kid playing on the Justice Monsters machine. Thought he was gonna beat my highscore.”  
  
Typical. Noctis rolled his eyes and continued looking, letting his flashlight trail to every corner, every shadowed area, but still he found no sign that anything was out of the ordinary. “So,” he said, but he hesitated to continue, not wanting to fuel Prompto’s paranoia further.  
  
But Prompto was looking at him, eyebrows raised. “So?”  
  
“So,” Noctis repeated, “We don’t know much. But—Dave said, people come in this house...and they don’t come back out.”  
  
“You’re kidding me.”  
  
“Nope.” Noctis looked over the books on the shelves, curious despite himself. Old titles, just as he’d expected. “Hunters have been coming here for...well, he said years. I don’t know how many.”  
  
Prompto made a curious noise. “And they get killed?”  
  
“Supposedly.” Noctis hesitated, remembering the confusion in Dave’s face, the obvious way he hadn’t been able to make any sense of it. “They disappear. As in, they never show up ever again. Not even in the house.”  
  
“So,” Prompto came to stand beside him, brows furrowed, “How do we know there’s a daemon in here and that it’s a revenant?”  
  
“This one guy _did_ get out,” Noctis muttered. “Apparently he had to leave his partner behind, Bryan-something. Nothing he said made any sense after he got out, though. Dave said he was screaming about revenants and the darkness swallowing them up.”  
  
Prompto shuddered. “That’s ominous.”  
  
“Yeah.” He could still recall the pained look on Dave’s face, the way the whole thing had made him so unhappy. It had all occurred years ago, but it still seemed to affect him even now. He seemed to feel personally responsible for the demise of any of his hunters, whether they died or fell sick to the trauma of whatever happened to them. It was admirable, in a way.  
  
“Come on,” Noctis said. “Let’s keep looking.”  
  
He led the way back out into the corridor, turning right to follow it down to the next room, leading deeper in the house. He couldn’t help but feel that the further they went, the darker the corridor became. The colder the air felt.  
  
Maybe he was just as paranoid as Prompto, influenced by the information of the terrible things that had happened here over the years.  
  
In total, there were three doors on the right wall - including the room they’d just checked - and one final door at the very end of the corridor. Checking the next room down revealed a study, just as empty and dusty as the other room, just as lacking in signs of any daemonic activity.  
  
All they had to go on so far was dust and grime and it was awfully disgusting. They sure as hell were getting a motel after this; he’d need at least half an hour in the shower to feel clean again.  
  
The third door down led into a kitchen. Even _more_ disgusting, the grimy pots and pans littering the place, but no further helping them in their quest. Still, they checked every cupboard just in case, checked under the table and in between every gap.  
  
“Why a revenant?” Prompto asked eventually. “Like...if they’re not that well known, then why did he call it a revenant?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Noctis said. He nudged a pot at his feet, shining his light on it. He’d thought he’d seen blood for a second, but there was nothing there when he looked. “Maybe he named it after something in his culture, or a story he’d grown up with. Who knows.”  
  
They headed back out. The last doorway they came across opened up into another hallway. Noctis hesitated as they stepped in, turning left to face the new corridor. There was something odd about this, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.  
  
He reached up, touched the small button on his earpiece. “Hey, Ignis, found anything yet?”  
  
A pause, then sounds crackling to life from the other end as Ignis unmuted his own earpiece. “ _Nothing so far,_ ” he answered. “ _And you?_ ”  
  
“Nah,” Noctis said. “I was just checking in. Going back to radio silence.”  
  
“ _Alright. Keep us updated on anything you find._ ”  
  
Prompto stared at him as he muted his earpiece again, his expression solemn, lips pulled downwards. Noctis regarded him silently for a moment, before he grabbed his shoulder and squeezed gently. “I get that you’re nervous, but we gotta stay focused, okay? We have a job to do here.”  
  
Prompto nodded. “Yeah,” he murmured. He glanced around at the dark hallway. “Just—this place gives me the creeps.”  
  
“Yeah. Me too.”  
  
It was the way everything was _so dark_ , a lack of windows bringing in any potential moonlight or showing any signs of the outside world. They were suddenly trapped within these walls, dusty floral wallpaper hanging in strips and peels and floorboards creaking under their boots as they went. Their flashlights could only show them so much, and the darkness beyond seemed... _threatening_.  
  
They tried door after door, coming into abandoned rooms. Noctis had no idea what they were looking for exactly, only that they would _know_ once they found it. This daemon, it was said to roam this house. It _lived_ here, like it was trapped, and it could outwait anyone who came inside. So there would be signs, Dave said.  
  
Unless, he thought to himself, it roamed these hallways too, just like they were, and it was only a matter of time until they ran into it.  
  
Either way didn’t matter. Just as long as they found it, put an end to it, and got out. A job was a job, they would get paid in the end no matter how it went down.  
  
They tried another door. This room was empty of any furniture, of _anything_ really, apart from the row of tall mirrors lining the left wall.  
  
And the doll sitting in the middle of the floor.  
  
Noctis stared at it, keeping his flashlight trained on it like a spotlight.  
  
Peering over his shoulder, Prompto said, “I’m thinking a hard _no_.”  
  
“You’re right,” Noctis answered, and he quietly pulled the door shut.  
  
As they walked away, a scraping noise emitted from the other side of the door. Prompto whirled around instantly, eyes wide, his flashlight nearly blinding Noctis as it hit him. “Did you hear that?”  
  
Noctis grimaced, holding his hand up against the beam. “Yeah. Probably just the house settling.”  
  
“That was _not_ the house settling,” Prompto hissed, coming closer and back towards the door. He pressed his ear up against it, listening, his eyes still wide, but no other sounds came through. It had just been the small scrape. “Oh geez,” he shivered, “Come on, let’s go.”  
  
“No, wait a second,” Noctis approached the door again, opening it and peering back inside, shining his light around room.  
  
He frowned.  
  
“Come on, Noct.”  
  
“Wait,” Noctis said. “Has that doll moved?”  
  
“What?” Prompto whispered, coming to stand in the doorway with him. “Oh man, I don’t...I don’t know? Maybe?”  
  
Noctis stepped inside, approaching the doll, ignoring their reflections and the way their lights would bounce off the row of mirrors. There was something _strange_ about this room, something cold in the air, sending a chill down his spine.  
  
Maybe it was just the nervousness.  
  
The doll had something held in its lap. A black object. Noctis crouched down to retrieve it, lifting it up carefully for them both to see.  
  
It was an old voice recorder, with a cassette already inside. Noctis shared a glance with Prompto before he pressed the rewind button, cringing at the loud noises that erupted as the tape rewound back to the beginning. Once it was done, he pressed play.  
  
A sigh came from the small speaker, before a gruff voice said, “ _Somethin’ weird happened to the old tape, it corrupted or somethin’, I dunno. So here goes. Day three inside the Garland manor. Not lookin’ like much of a manor on the outside, but on the inside?_ ” The voice chuckled, low, almost bitter. “ _Maybe comin’ to this place wasn’t my best idea, but there’s no goin’ back now. This thing knows I’m here. I’ve been lookin’ for two days and two nights. Still ain’t seen it. But I know it’s here. I been walkin’ in circles this whole time. Guess Eddie was right after all._ ”  
  
Prompto was frowning. “Eddie?”  
  
“The hunter that got out of here,” Noctis said, found he could only murmur the words, “He was called Edward. Think that’s him?”  
  
The tape let out crackled and indecipherable sounds, clearly worn down by age. “ _Day five inside the Garland manor. I ain’t fou—but I hear it. It’s like it’s tryin’ to drive me_ craz— _won’t win. It won’t win._ ”  
  
“I don’t feel comfortable listening to this,” Prompto muttered. He turned and headed for the doorway, leaning against the frame and waiting there while Noctis stood still with the voice recorder in hand.  
  
He understood. A lot of hunters had come to this house over the years; none of them had returned. These recordings, these snippets of this gruff hunter trying to maintain his cool while recording his findings, this was someone who had come here to fight the daemon—  
  
And who had died in the process. He was listening to a dead man. Hell, this was probably the hunter who had come before them. Their predecessor.  
  
“— _eleven. Can’t sleep properly anymore. Comple—food. My water won’t—walkin’ in circles._ ”  
  
What did that mean? Walking in circles? The manor wasn’t _that_ big.  
  
“Come on,” Noct,” Prompto called softly. “Leave that thing alone.”  
  
“ _Can’t remember—it is. Day—venteen? Keep—in circles. Things appe—shouldn’t. Hear—running._ ”  
  
“Noct.”  
  
“ _Found an—oll. Maybe it—keep me company. Need all the comp—can get in here._ ”  
  
Noctis pressed his lips together and stopped the tape, unable to listen any further.  
  
Had he heard that right? Had that man been in this house for seventeen days, looking for a daemon that he couldn’t find? He was either very persistent in his hunt, or something about that whole situation hadn’t been quite right.  
  
It left a rather sad, constricting feeling in his chest. He crouched down, his fingers brushing against the dress as he placed the recorder back where it had been on the doll’s lap. He didn’t like the idea of taking it with him.  
  
He stood back up.  
  
Movement in the mirrors opposite him. A figure moving behind him, pale, looming over him. Noctis whirled around, breath in his throat, hand clenching around thin air as he prepared to draw his weapon out, but—  
  
There was nothing there. He looked in every direction, but he was the only one in the room.  
  
“You okay?” Prompto called.  
  
“Did you see that?” Noctis turned back to him. “Did you see something behind me?”  
  
Prompto frowned. “No. Why?”  
  
Noctis let out a breath, willing his heart to stop pounding so hard against his chest. It must have been his imagination. Prompto’s own paranoia leaking into him, fuelled by those recordings and the ever present darkness around them.  
  
Still, despite trying to reassure himself, something quite feel right and he wanted to get far away from those mirrors and that doll. Noctis turned and quickly marched out of the room, practically shoving Prompto through the doorway so he could close it shut behind them.  
  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Prompto was saying, “What’s going on, man?”  
  
“Nothing,” Noctis muttered. “Let’s just keep going.”  
  
Prompto caught his arm as he tried to pass him, stopping him from moving any further. “No, _stop_ , are you saying you saw something? I swear, if you’re playing a joke on me—”  
  
“I’m not playing a joke,” Noctis snapped back, “It’s just my head playing tricks on me.”  
  
“Yeah, right,” Prompto said, “Then why are you so scared?”  
  
“I’m not _scared_ , I—”  
  
At the end of the corridor, a door creaked open.  
  
Noctis whipped his head in that direction instantly. Prompto’s fingers clenched around his arm.  
  
But there was nothing to be seen in the hallway, there was nothing to be heard coming from the other end of whichever door had just moved. Hadn’t they all just been shut? He could remember inspecting every one of them when they’d entered, and they had all been firmly closed.  
  
Noctis tilted his flashlight around, shining it until he found the door at the very end, now open a crack to reveal nothing but darkness further inside.  
  
“What the hell was that?” Prompto whispered.  
  
Noctis hesitated, hating the way his heart was hammering against his chest again. “A breeze?”  
  
“A _breeze_ ,” Prompto hissed, “Really? Do you _feel_ a breeze in here? That was something else.”  
  
“Like what?” Noctis shot him a look. “A _ghost_?” Prompto stared back at him, pale and wide eyed once more in the flashlight’s glare. Noctis looked back at the door. “There’s only one thing that could’ve caused that. Get your gun out.”  
  
Prompto did as he was told, yanking his gun out of the armoury with a flash of crystals, holding it up. “Should we, uh—shouldn’t we get Gladio and Ignis?”  
  
Yeah, maybe they should, but this thing could very well get away from them by the time Gladio and Ignis showed up to help, and that was _if_ there was even something there after all.  
  
It was better to find out first. To make sure.  
  
“In a minute,” Noctis said, and he pulled his sword out.  
  
They approached the door slowly, weapons at the ready, keeping their footsteps light. They used hand gestures and mouthed words to make sure they were thinking the same thing; Prompto would stand back with his gun aimed and ready, and Noctis would yank the door open and get out of the line of fire.  
  
From what they could see through the crack, whatever room the door led into seemed as dark as everything else, almost impenetrable. Noctis swallowed as he grabbed the handle, making sure he had a firm grip on it.  
  
He looked up at Prompto. Prompto tightened his hands on his gun and nodded back.  
  
Noctis yanked the door open.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Nothing but darkness. Noctis tilted his flashlight around with his free hand, let the beam hit more of that floral wallpaper, a dusty old cabinet, a fallen vase with wilted flowers. It looked rather small for a room, the wall not far away from the door.  
  
It wasn’t a room. Noctis cautiously stepped through and quickly glanced around, his suspicions confirmed. Another corridor, and empty at that, with each door firmly shut. So either the daemon had scurried off and closed a door behind it, or it hadn’t been near them in the first place.  
  
Noctis sighed. Something wasn’t right here.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Prompto murmured.  
  
Noctis shook his head. “Why does this house seem so much bigger on the inside? This layout—it doesn’t seem possible.”  
  
Prompto looked thoughtful, and relieved that they hadn’t come across any daemon. “I dunno, maybe it’s just—”  
  
Footsteps. Heavy thuds, loud, right above them. Running. From the doorway and down the corridor, pounding against the ceiling quickly. Something slammed shut, like a door.  
  
“Oh, shit,” Prompto hissed.  
  
Noctis reached for his earpiece instantly, unmuting it. “Guys, are you upstairs?”  
  
Gladio’s voice came through instantly. “ _No, we’re still on the ground floor. Why? You guys okay?_ ”  
  
“We just heard something running upstairs,” Prompto said. “Sounded like a person.”  
  
“ _Shit. Okay, let’s regroup at the foyer.”_  
  
“Got it.” Noctis shared a quick glance with Prompto and led the way back down the corridor, already feeling like he was shaky from the adrenaline.  
  
It was strange, but it had sounded like a _person_. Those footsteps, that had been someone running. So either someone else was here in the house with them, or they had finally found signs of the daemon roaming the hallways.  
  
If he was honest with himself, both scenarios had his worry spiking.  
  
They practically charged through the first corridor they’d come through, dashing down it as quickly as they could, one by one as the walls were simply too narrow for them to run together. Noctis reached the door first, grabbing the handle to the lead them back into the foyer, except—  
  
Except when he opened it, they stumbled into the room with the doll.  
  
Noctis froze, staring down at it. That harmless little thing, with the voice recorder resting in its lap. The mirrors lining the left wall.  
  
“What?” Prompto said. There was something nervous in his voice, shaky. “What, that doesn’t—this—”  
  
“This is—” Noctis swallowed, clenching his hand around the door handle, “This is the way to the foyer, right? We came back the right way?”  
  
“Yeah, we did,” Prompto turned to face him, then pointed to the door behind them, “Look, this’ll be that room with the piano.” He marched over to that door, yanking it open, and sure enough it was the room with the couches and the dusty bookshelves and the piano Noctis had been playing with, except—  
  
Except the large window was gone, replaced instead with a solid wall and more of that floral wallpaper. Like it had never been there in the first place.  
  
Prompto came back out, lips pressed together and eyes serious, coming over to Noctis and leaning against the wall, regarding him silently.  
  
There had to be an explanation for this, although the more he thought about it the more it just didn’t make _any_ sense. This was the way they had come. That other room had _definitely_ had a window in it, he _remembered_ that. He remembered the moonlight shining in.  
  
Noctis looked back into room, through the door that should have led into the foyer, down at the doll sitting in the center. The voice recorder kept safely in its lap.  
  
“That guy,” he murmured, “on the tape. He said he was walking in circles.”  
  
Prompto frowned, eyes flicking over to the doll and the voice recorder. “You think that’s what this is?”  
  
“I don’t know _what_ it is,” Noctis shook his head. “All I know is the layout in this house, before this, it didn’t feel right. It’s too big on the inside.”  
  
Prompto leaned back and thumped his head against the wall.  
  
“ _Noct? Prompto?_ ” Ignis’s voice came through their earpieces, low and concerned.  
  
Gladio’s soon followed. “ _You guys having trouble getting to the foyer?_ ”  
  
Prompto snorted and unmuted his earpiece again. “Do you mean it’s not where it’s supposed to be? Rooms are all mixed up and changed? Windows are gone? That sorta thing?”  
  
A pause, then Gladio said, “ _Yeah. Exactly that. Shit._ ”  
  
“ _I’m positive it’s the revenant,_ ” Ignis said. “ _We came across a tape recorder earlier of a hunter’s previous time in here. He mentioned the same thing—_ ”  
  
Noctis cut him off. “Walking around in circles?” A cold feeling was running down his spine again, and he shared a worried glance with Prompto.  
  
There was confusion in Ignis’s voice when he answered. “ _Yes, he said that._ ”  
  
“Did you find it in a room with a doll and mirrors?”  
  
“ _Yes._ ”  
  
“Yeah, we did too.”  
  
It was unnerving. There had been no sign that anything had gone wrong, no shift from logical to illogical. They had just walked through corridors and checked in doors, and suddenly everything was muddled up.  
  
And not just where they were, but possibly the entire house. If Ignis and Gladio had come across the same room they had, then there was no telling _which_ side of the house that room was supposed to be on.  
  
Which meant they could never know exactly where they were.  
  
Prompto groaned and ran a hand down his face. “You said it’s the daemon?”  
  
“ _I’m positive,_ ” Ignis answered. “ _Think of it this way. The revenant is supposed to hide away. What better way to do that than in a maze of its own making?_ ”  
  
“ _I say it’s not hiding_ ,” Gladio said, “ _It’s toying with us. Trying to confuse us and get us vulnerable._ ”  
  
Prompto let out a little noise, sounding almost offended. “You telling me this _daemon_ made the house all wonky?”  
  
“ _Pretty much._ ”  
  
“That’s not fair.”  
  
Noctis sighed. He pulled the door closed, unable to be in that doll’s presence any longer, the way it felt like it was staring at him, drawing him in. “Okay, how do we fix things? Find the daemon and kill it?”  
  
Ignis was the one to answer. “ _I dare say it seems like a good a plan as any other. Else we could very well be stuck like this_.”  
  
“Just until the sun rises,” Prompto said.  
  
Noctis let out a slow breath. “Maybe not necessarily.” He looked up at Prompto. “That hunter on the tape, I think he was stuck here for weeks. This—whatever the daemon’s done, it’s cut us off from the foyer and it’s blocked out any windows.”  
  
“ _Meaning, there won’t be any sunlight to help us out here,_ ” Gladio said, voice grim. “ _Not this time._ ”  
  
Prompto cursed. “No wonder no one’s ever seen again once they step inside this place.”  
  
Noctis could only agree. “Alright. Move out, find this daemon. Keep us updated on anything that happens.”  
  
It only made him more uneasy to hear the concerned tone in Gladio’s voice when he said, “ _You too._ ”  
  
They began walking again, away from the doll’s room and back down the corridor.  
  
  
~&~  
  
  
‘Maze’ was a simple way of putting it. In fact, it was a downright lie.  
  
At least a maze had actual pathways, joining onto each other to eventually lead to an actual exit.  
  
The house was a jumbled up mess, constantly shifting and changing around them as they went. And still there was no sign of it happening, no noises around them, no crashes or sounds of shifting wood or _anything_ that would give them a hint.  
  
Nothing but the sound of their footsteps creaking on old rotting floorboards. They went through room after room, corridor after corridor, ending up in new places and old, until it all seemed to blend into one. Everything began to look the same, and it was dizzying.  
  
And still without any windows, without any sign of the outside world existing.  
  
They didn’t find the daemon. Or Ignis and Gladio.  
  
“Damn it,” Noctis cursed when they tried another door, only to come back to the kitchen. Frustrated, he kicked at one of the pots on the floor, flinching as it skittered across the tiles and bounced off the table leg. “There _has_ to be a way to do this.”  
  
“Okay,” Prompto said, running his hands over his face. “Let’s just stop and think for a moment. We’re smart guys, we can come up with a solution.”  
  
Could they? They seemed to be doing everything on the daemon’s terms here, which was _ridiculous_. Daemons—well, spending time on the road, venturing out across the country, and fighting against daemons certainly hadn’t made them experts on the matter, but he didn’t think they were like _this_. Smart. Cunning. Evasive.  
  
They were so used to fighting goblins and flans and running from iron giants. This seemed so much different. Out of their league. They very well could have walked straight into a death trap here, with no one to help them escape.  
  
Curious, he pulled out his phone to check it. He wasn’t all that surprised when he found he had no signal, and he put it back in his pocket with a sigh. It seemed like their connection with Ignis and Gladio could still work, but probably only because they were under the same roof.  
  
They had to draw this thing out somehow. There was no chance in hell he wanted any of them to spend days, _weeks_ , in this place. What had that other hunter gone through, the one on the voice recorder? Seventeen days, had he said?  
  
It had probably been far more than that, Noctis thought grimly. He hadn’t listened to the rest of the tape, after all. It was a sobering mental image to have. Someone on their own, trapped in this maze for over _two weeks_ , hunting down a daemon that refused to be found.  
  
Maybe not exactly.  
  
He found himself thinking about that doll again. Had he just imagined a figure behind him in the mirrors, or had that really been something _else_? Had it been the revenant?  
  
Why then? Why had it shown _then_?  
  
That doll had given him strange feelings. Not just with how out of place it had been, sitting on its own in that nearly empty room, but something _else_ about it had made him uneasy.  
  
He needed to see it again.  
  
“Let’s find the doll,” Noctis murmured.  
  
Prompto shuddered. “Ew, why? I don’t like that thing.”  
  
“I just want to check something.”  
  
Of course, finding the room again was a bit of a problem in an ever shifting maze. Trying door after door after door, opening into storage rooms, closets, the piano room, ending up back in the kitchen, peering in on a bedroom.  
  
Then, finally, they were back at the room with the doll, still sitting there in the centre, the row of mirrors there on the left wall.  
  
Prompto stayed near the door with his gun out while Noctis stepped inside slowly and carefully, keeping his eyes on every corner, every mirror, every inch of the room. Maybe it was just his imagination, but it felt _strange_ in here.  
  
He approached the doll. It still looked as innocent as before, sitting there harmlessly, voice recorder cradled in its lap. It could have been a pretty thing, if it wasn’t so old. Long curling hair, a once white dress with lace, a sweet round face, if a little blank looking. The kind of thing a child would play with.  
  
It hit him then. He had seen this doll before, in that painting back in the foyer. No wonder it looked so old, and so familiar. It had been that little girl’s doll, with the same golden curls.  
  
That same feeling came over him the closer he got to it. Cold. Shivering. Chills running down his spine. An uneasiness that left his skin prickling. Was it just his own feelings or was it something _making_ him feel that way? He couldn’t tell.  
  
“Careful, Noct,” Prompto called.  
  
He crouched down, this time picking up the doll and inspecting it closely. It was a dirty thing, grime and dust coating its porcelain face, its dress, its hair.  
  
He turned the doll around in his hands, looking for anything out of place, but it just seemed like an ordinary doll. Old and abandoned, left behind by its owner.  
  
Colour caught his eye. On the back of the doll, and on one of the locks of hair. Noctis frowned and peered closer, holding it up to his flashlight to get a better look.  
  
There was a stain on a part of the dress, on the doll’s back. A rusty brown colour like old, dried blood. A thumbprint. A few other, smaller splatters here and there near the hem of the dress.  
  
Noctis frowned.  
  
“Noct, look out!”  
  
The nausea hit him first. The stench a quick second. It filled his nostrils and seemed to climb into the back of his throat, crawling down into his body so he was consumed by it. The horrible smell of rotting flesh, of _decay_.  
  
Noctis looked up, and the revenant looked back out of a misshapen, bloated face, standing directly in front of him, staring down at him through grey, cloudy eyes. Its body was barely a human shape, crooked, bloated in places, with what looked like tatters of old clothes still trying to cling to it, strands of thin hair trying to grow out of its head. Its skin looked like it was covered in bruises, stretched thin over its bones.  
  
Its nails, like long talons, sharp and glinting in the beam of his flashlight.  
  
The revenant shrieked and it swung for him.  
  
Prompto began firing. One shot, two, three. Loud bangs that cracked through the room and had Noctis’s ears ringing as he stumbled back, still clutching onto the doll. His suspicions had been right then, it was something to do with _this_ that drew the daemon out.  
  
He quickly shoved the doll into the armoury and drew his sword out within a few quick seconds, swinging for the revenant. Dodging out of the way of Prompto’s line of fire. The daemon dodged too, leaping away from another burst of bullets. Behind it, one of the mirrors smashed into pieces.  
  
Despite its awkward and crooked appearance, the thing was _fast_. It shrieked and ducked, swiping at Noctis, knocking him back and into the wall with a grunt.  
  
He swung his sword back at it, slicing across its body. Again and again.  
  
Prompto kept firing.  
  
But still the daemon kept coming. Their weapons were barely having any effect. They weren’t even slowing it down.  
  
“ _Shit_ ,” Prompto cried. He must have come to the same conclusion. “Noct, we gotta get outta here!”  
  
But they had to kill this thing, it was why they’d come here. It was why they were _trapped_. They couldn’t leave unless this daemon was _dead_.  
  
He tried ducking out of the way of another attack, narrowly missing its claws. But it was still far too fast, keeping up with every movement he made, every roll and dodge.  
  
It managed to rush up close, bloated, rotting face coming down to him, sharp teeth suddenly sinking into his shoulder. Biting down hard and _chewing_ , as if it wanted to _devour_ him. Noctis cried out, thrashing, trying to get away.  
  
“Noct!” Prompto was firing again, quick bursts that did little good. Then his boots were pounding across the floorboards, coming closer and closer, until he was bodily slamming into the revenant, forcing it away from Noctis, its teeth ripping from him. He could only watch as the two of them fell, collapsing into the mirrors, glass shattering into shards that fell everywhere.  
  
“Prompto,” Noctis gasped. He rushed forward, grabbed Prompto’s wrist, and he dragged him to his feet. “Come on!”  
  
He didn’t let go, pulling him towards the open doorway. They began sprinting as the revenant shrieked behind them.  
  
They ran through doorway after doorway, slamming them closed behind them, sprinting through endless corridors until finally the shrieking stopped, the sound cutting off as simply as that. And still they kept going, until Prompto grabbed his wrist and opened a side door, dragging him inside and locking the door behind them.  
  
Noctis doubled over, hands on his knees, breath coming out in heavy pants. His heart was still pounding so hard against his chest he thought it might burst out and land on the floor in front of him.  
  
Prompto was in no better condition, leaned back against the door and breathing harshly, hand over his face. “ _Fuck_ ,” he said. “That thing—it’s—”  
  
“Yeah,” Noctis could only gasp back.  
  
“God, come here,” Prompto was suddenly beside him, grabbing him and pulling him upright, turning him by his jacket. His hands were shaking, but they were gentle as he pulled at the collar of Noctis’s jacket and t-shirt, revealing the bite underneath.  
  
Noctis winced at the pain, at the fresh burning sensation running across his skin. “It was trying to _eat_ me.”  
  
“Yeah, I saw,” Prompto nodded. He began looking around, letting his flashlight reveal the rest of the room they’d stumbled into.  
  
It was a bathroom. A small thing, barely big enough for the tub let alone the two of them. There was a sink behind him, which Prompto soon approached, trying the faucets, although Noctis couldn’t think what sort of result he’d expected from an old, abandoned house. A maze of a house, at that.  
  
“No water.” Prompto winced. “Can’t clean your wound with anything. You’ll just have to use a potion on it.”  
  
Noctis nodded, already pulling one out of the armoury with a grimace. A bite seemed like too minor a wound to waste a potion on, but it was all they had. He cracked the bottle, let it shatter in his hand as his magic absorbed the potion. The bite on his neck stung, and a wave of nausea came with it, but he avoided touching the wound for now. Better just to let it sit and heal.  
  
Prompto ran a shaking hand through his hair. He still looked a little unnerved as he sat back on the edge of the tub. “So. That was, uh, a thing that happened.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“We’ll have to tell Gladio and Iggy.” Prompto looked up at him. “You think it’ll come back?”  
  
Noctis held no doubts about that. It had shown up when he’d grabbed the doll, and he’d gone ahead and kept that thing. He licked his lips, swallowing thickly as he said, “As long as I’ve got that doll, I think it’ll chase us. It’s only a matter of time before it shows up again.”  
  
“Great!” Prompto gave him a shaky smile. “That’s just great. Gladio’s gonna kill us for this.” He eyed Noctis up and down, suddenly serious. “You okay, though? That bite looked awful.”  
  
“I—” Noctis swallowed again, shivering. “I’m good. Might need a moment, though.”  
  
Prompto nodded, eyes falling to the dirty tiles beneath them. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
“So, guess what guys,” Prompto forced a cheery tone to his voice, although it fell a little flat, “we found the daemon.”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Ignis’s voice came to them over the earpieces instantly. “ _What happened? Are you alright?_ ”  
  
Sat huddled together on a dirty bathroom floor in a maze of a house with a shrieking daemon after them, yeah, but at least they were still alive. “We’re good,” Noctis said. The skin along his shoulder and his throat was aching like hell, the flesh tender and sore, pulsing under the material of his shirt and jacket, but it was a minor wound and it should be healing by now anyway. “We have good news and bad news.”  
  
“ _Good news first,_ ” Gladio said.  
  
“We got it to come to us. We drew it out. You guys saw that doll, yeah?” Noctis picked at the material of his jeans, over his knees. When he received confirmation, he continued, “For some reason, that thing drew it out. I only had to pick it up for the revenant to appear and start attacking us.”  
  
“ _And where’s the doll now?_ ”  
  
Noctis _(_ _give it back)_ hesitated. “In the armoury.”  
  
“ _God damn it. Okay. Bad news?_ ”  
  
“Our weapons barely did anything to it,” Prompto answered. “I fired so many shots, Noct sliced it up, and zip. Nothing.”  
  
Ignis hummed. “ _Curious. Then, perhaps, we need to approach it from a different angle. If weapons are of no hindrance to it, then it’s possible magic might be instead._ ”  
  
“Huh,” Prompto nodded. “Like flans.”  
  
“ _Precisely_.”  
  
“Yeah, but there’s just one problem,” Noctis cut in, glancing over at him. “We’re low on flasks. We’ve got, what, two fire spells and one ice? I’ve got one of each and the other’s with Specs. That’s not a lot of magic.”  
  
“ _True, but they’re all strong. Potent. They could be enough to harm this thing and kill it._ ”  
  
Noctis muttered a curse and thumped his head back against the wall. If only they’d found an elemental deposit before this hunt. He’d been running low on those energies for a while, every last trace either poured into the flasks with his magic, or faded from his body entirely. If only he’d known.  
  
“ _The fire’s potent, yeah,_ ” Gladio said. “ _But these rooms, there’s just not enough space. If we set one of the flasks off, chances are we’ll get hurt along with it. We need more room._ ”  
  
Prompto pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead, resting his elbow on his knees, squeezing his eyes shut as he said, “I bet the foyer’s got enough space for that.”  
  
Noctis closed his eyes. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”  
  
He was right, of course. Out of all the rooms they had been in so far, the foyer was the biggest. There would be more than enough room to keep away from the magic blast.  
  
“ _It’s better than nothing,_ ” Ignis said.  
  
“Alright,” Noctis sighed. “Guess it’s a plan.”  
  
“ _Where are you guys?_ ” Gladio asked. “ _What room?_ ”  
  
“A bathroom. Small, with a tub in it.” He grabbed his flashlight and tilted it, let it shine on the walls around them. “There’s an old painting above the tub.”  
  
“ _Alright, I think we came across that one before. Stay put if you can, we’re gonna come and find you. If we’re gonna take this thing on, then we should do it together._ ”  
  
Prompto snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that.”  
  
There was actually little sarcasm in his voice when Gladio simply said, “Thanks.”  
  
  
~&~  
  
  
It didn’t take long for Gladio’s frustration to get the better of him, his fist colliding with the open door they’d just walked through hard enough to cause a dent.  
  
Ignis couldn’t say he blamed him. He would have done the same, but he knew he had to keep a cool head. For all of them.  
  
It didn’t matter how many doors they went through, they kept coming back to the same three or four rooms. This bedroom had to be the most common sighting, and while he was beginning to tire of it, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a certain reason to that.  
  
As if this house had any sort of logic.  
  
Then again, it must have done. He thought back to that room the doll had been in, the one Noctis and Prompto had said they’d come across themselves. That had to be for a reason, hadn’t it? Especially if Noctis was correct, if that doll was important to the revenant enough that it would come out of hiding just to attack them.  
  
So maybe there _was_ some logic to all of this.  
  
“I can’t leave them on their own,” Gladio muttered as he stepped inside the bedroom. “This is driving me crazy.”  
  
“Keep calm,” Ignis told him, following him inside. “We won’t do them any favours if we begin losing our composure.”  
  
Gladio looked at him, tired and frustrated and worried. “I _know_ that. But if that thing gets them, I’ll never forgive—”  
  
“I know,” Ignis cut him off. He didn’t want to hear any such things, he didn’t want mental images of Noctis and Prompto falling victim to the daemon in this house, no matter how possible that scenario was at the moment. “And I as well.”  
  
Gladio blew out a breath. “We need to keep moving.”  
  
“In a moment,” Ignis said. He stared around the room, taking it in properly this time. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was here.  
  
There were no windows, of course, nothing but four walls of faded, torn wallpaper. The shelves at the back wall held little figurines on it, pretty things that would have looked better if they weren’t covered in grime. On the top shelf, a large wooden rocking horse was balanced against the wall, its ears brushing against the ceiling.  
  
A child’s bedroom then.  
  
He continued to look around the room, ignoring Gladio’s restless pacing in favour of taking in every detail, trying not to miss a thing.  
  
Dolls lay on the bed, leaning up against the headboard and huddled together in the darkness. They were of different sizes, different types, different coloured hair. They looked harmless, could have been, but the memory of that singular doll in that other room had something like wariness prickling in the back of his head.  
  
They held onto an old worn journal. He snatched it up, flicking through it, wondering if maybe _this_ was what he was supposed to see.  
  
But it was merely some diary, of a child at that if he gathered from the writing structure, and he felt awful for looking through it. He skimmed the pages, refusing to take in most of it, letting this long gone girl keep her privacy.  
  
He stopped. The last two entries caught his eyes.  
  
The first, in a childlike attempt at cursive. Old, smudged ink staining the paper.  
  
“Iggy, are you seriously reading that?” Gladio muttered.  
  
_Ever since the doctor told Mama I’m sick, she’s been acting funny. And Papa. I hear them crying in their rooms and it makes me sad. I keep telling them it’s okay, the doctor will make me better, but Mama just leaves the room whenever I try to tell her.  
  
It’s like they don’t want to see me anymore. They just keep telling me to play in my room with my dolls. But I want to play outside, I want to play with the other children nearby, but Mama says I’m not allowwed.  
  
I keep hugging Molly Doll before I sleep at night and when I feel bad. She’s the one Mama gave me. She named it after me, you know. I love her so much, she’s the only one that makes me feel better when I’m sick. She keeps me safe. She always dose.  
  
I’ll keep her safe too. Forever and ever and ever.  
  
_ Gladio, despite his previous words, was peering over his shoulder down at the page. “Poor kid,” he murmured.  
  
Ignis hummed, but the girl’s entry wasn’t what had a chill running down his spine, warning bells beginning to ring in his head.  
  
It was the one on the next page. In newer ink, different handwriting.  
  
_Dear Molly,  
  
I get it now. We been in this house of yours for too long, and I didn’t know jack about what was going on here, but I finally get it. I’m sorry you felt this pain. I’m sorry you were hurting so much.  
  
I hope you can understand why I want Eddie to get out. He’s not good with _~~_shit_ ~~_stuff like this. He’s scared that every ghost story he heard back home is true now that he’s seen this revenant thing. And he’s got kids himself. One of them is a little girl like you. He should get to go home. He can’t stay here like this.  
  
So I’ll let it devour me. I’ll keep your doll safe for you, I promise. Forever and ever and ever.  
  
Bryant Kennon_  
  
“Bryant Kennon,” Ignis repeated out loud.  
  
Gladio, back over at the door, looked over at him. “Edward’s friend? The one who got left behind in here?”  
  
Yes, that was exactly who it was. So what did any of this mean? What did he mean by ‘letting it devour him’? He felt like the answer was right there, just out of reach, and it was frustrating that he couldn’t grab onto it.  
  
If only they had more information about Edward and his time here. Dave had told them he never made any sense with the things he said.  
  
Except, he apparently had. The darkness had swallowed them all up after all, just like he would tell Dave.  
  
“Iggy, come on,” Gladio said. “I can’t stay here any longer. I wanna keep moving.”  
  
“Yes, alright,” Ignis said. He closed the journal and tucked it back into the embrace of the dolls, returning it to where it had been. He straightened up, giving it one last lingering look, before he turned and followed Gladio out of the room.  
  
They had to find the others.  
  
Before the daemon did.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
He wasn’t sure how long it took to occur to him, that the revenant had appeared in that room without the use of the door. Not there one minute, and _poof_ , there the next. Unless it had been a one off for that room in particular, then it was a worrying ability for it to have.  
  
“We can’t stay here,” Noctis mumbled. He hadn’t realised up until then that he was practically leaning on Prompto, head nearly touching his shoulder. He struggled to straighten up, fighting back a wince at the way his head throbbed a little at the movement. His shoulder was still burning. “The daemon can show up any minute.”  
  
“It could,” Prompto said, “but it hasn’t so far.”  
  
That was true. It had seemed so desperate to come after them too. Or it had sounded that way; Noctis hadn’t really been looking back at it as they’d ran, he’d merely been focusing on getting them both the hell away from it.  
  
But Prompto was right. It could show up inside this locked bathroom, and yet it hadn’t. Did it need to find them first? Locate them?  
  
If he was to believe that first figure in the mirror had been the revenant, then the daemon only seemed to show up when he touched the doll. Maybe that was it, it held some sort of... _connection_ with it, some mental link, and touching it alerted the daemon of their presence. Maybe having the doll tucked away in the armoury was the only thing protecting them right now, it kept them hidden. If he brought it out, would the revenant show up?  
  
He wasn’t ready to test that theory just yet. _(_ _please give it back)_ Not with the way his head felt off balance, the way he was dizzy. And certainly not until Ignis and Gladio arrived. The more help they had facing this thing, the better.  
  
“Wish we’d paid attention to you,” Noctis murmured after a while, giving Prompto a small grin. “We shouldn’t have stepped into the murder house.”  
  
Prompto grinned back. “Or split up, don’t forget that. I keep telling you guys, you should listen to me more often.” He nudged Noctis’s shoulder with his own. “But, hey, I _also_ said murders weren’t happening today. So, y’know, just a spoiler for ya there.”  
  
Noctis snorted. “Thanks.”  
  
They waited in more silence.  
  
“Wonder how long it’ll take for them to find us,” Prompto said.  
  
Noctis shrugged, then immediately regretted it when the pain flared up and down his shoulder and his neck. “With this house? Who knows.”  
  
Prompto stared at him, eyes flicking up and down. “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, just my shoulder,” Noctis said. He climbed to his feet, approaching the sink and peering into the dusty mirror above it. The wound didn’t look any worse when he checked on it, but it also didn’t look any better. It was pink around the edges, a little swollen, and the teeth marks looked more like cuts.  
  
Hadn’t he took a potion? Maybe the wound had been worse than he’d thought. It must have needed more tending to.  
  
With a sigh, he took another potion out of the armoury, crushing it in his grip.  
  
A wave of nausea hit him like a truck, pain stabbing at him in his stomach, and he bent over with a groan, wrapping his arms around himself as he tried to ride it out.  
  
“Noct?”  
  
“I’m good,” _(_ _please it hurts)_ Noctis breathed out. “Nothing to worry about.”  
  
When he looked up, a black shape caught his eye. There was something lying in the bathtub, and he frowned at it, sure the thing had been empty when they’d come in.  
  
Straightening up, swallowing against the nausea still trying to cling to him, he stepped up to the tub and let his flashlight fall on the object so he could get a better look. His heart in his throat, he reached down to grab it, closing his hands around the voice recorder and lifting it up to see it better.  
  
He looked over at Prompto.  
  
Prompto had stood up, his jaw tense, but he didn’t look surprised. “Is that the same one?”  
  
Noctis looked back down at the voice recorder. It needed rewinding. As if it had already been listened to.  
  
He pressed the rewind button down, waiting until it reached the beginning to press play.  
  
“ _Somethin’ weird happened to the old tape, it corrupted or somethin’, I dunno. So, here goes. Day three inside the Garland manor_ —”  
  
Noctis grit his teeth together, meeting Prompto’s startled eyes across the bathroom. Suddenly every shadow, every dark patch around them seemed untrustworthy, like there were things lurking there, figures waiting to jump out at any moment.  
  
“How—” Prompto stared at the voice recorder. “I don’t—why? _How_?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Noctis shook his head. He wasn’t going to pretend to understand anything happening in this house anymore. _(_ _i was once like you)_ It was the daemon’s influence, and that was it.  
  
“Maybe it knows where we are,” Prompto whispered, eyes darting around, as if the damn _walls_ were listening to them. Maybe they were.  
  
Was that what this was? A taunt? Was this thing _playing_ with them? He simply couldn’t work it out, and it was beyond maddening.  
  
Prompto opened his mouth to say something else, but Noctis quickly held up his hand to silence him, frowning as he stared down at the voice recorder. “— _It’s like it’s tryin’ to drive me crazy, but I won’t let it win. It won’t win._ ”  
  
That wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right with the tape.  
  
“ _Day eleven. Can’t sleep properly anymore, don’t even wanna try. Completely out of food. My water won’t last me long at this rate. I keep walkin’ in circles. Have to wonder when this’ll stop._ ”  
  
“Noct?” Prompto was staring at him. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“The tape,” Noctis said.  
  
“What about it?”  
  
Was he serious? Noctis frowned. “It’s not ruined anymore.”  
  
The tape continued to play, the hunter’s voice growing rougher with every entry of his vocal diary. “ _Can’t remember what day it is. I think it’s day seventeen? I keep walkin’ in circles. It’s gettin’ stranger, though. Things appear when they shouldn’t. Hear something running in other rooms every now and then. Think we’re both gettin’ tired of this game._ ”  
  
Noctis pointed at the voice recorder. “You can’t hear that? These...entries, whatever, they’re longer. They’re not ruined, I can make out what he’s saying.”  
  
Prompto glanced down at the machine. He looked perplexed, his eyes a little wide, lips parted. “Noct, it just—” he looked back up at Noctis, shrugging and shaking his head, “It just sounds like before. All garbled and old.”  
  
He had to be playing with him. _(_ _please i was once like you)_ He had to be toying with Noctis.  
  
And yet his confusion, his concern, it seemed genuine.  
  
“ _I found an old doll today._ ” Noctis’s attention snapped back to the voice recorder, his fingers clenching around it. “ _Maybe it’ll help keep me company. Need all the company I can get in here. This place is too quiet._ ”  
  
“He found the doll,” Noctis murmured.  
  
“Noct, I think you need to come sit down.” Prompto’s hands were suddenly on his shoulders, gentle and yet firm, trying to pull him back towards the wall they had been sitting against.  
  
“No, listen,” Noctis tried to struggle against him, clutching at the voice recorder, having to breathe through another wave of nausea. “Listen!”  
  
Prompto stared at him, dismayed. “Noct, I can’t hear anything. It’s _corrupted_. It just sounds like a garbled mess.”  
  
But it wasn’t corrupted, it _wasn’t_ , Noctis could hear him just fine over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, and still the hunter continued to speak, recording his final days in this hellhole of a house. “ _Fuckin’ thing bit me. It_ bit _me! Showed up outta nowhere, tryin’ to get this damn doll back. Shit, here it comes, shit—_ ”

  
The hunter broke off. Crashing noises erupted from the speaker, followed by grunts, and then—  
  
Screaming. The hunter was screaming, and then—  
  
And then the shrieks of the revenant, and then—  
  
And then nothing. No more sound came out of the speaker.  
  
“Noct?” Prompto wrenched the voice recorder from his hands, pressing the stop button and setting it aside back in the tub. “Noct.”  
  
God, his head hurt. Noctis pressed his hand to it, surprised at how his hair was sticking to his skin. It seemed too cold in the room for him to be sweating like this.  
  
Prompto’s hand was back on his shoulder then, making him jump, and he was frowning when Noctis looked up at him. “You okay?”  
  
He didn’t know why his hands were shaking when he held them up and inspected them. He didn’t know why he felt awful, like he was coming down with something, like the flu was suddenly trying to take hold. His skin felt like it was _burning_ despite the chills running over him and the goosebumps lining his arms.  
  
His head hurt. _(_ _see you are now me you hurt it hurts it hurts)_ It _hurt_.  
  
“I don’t—” _(_ _make it stop)_ Noctis swallowed thickly, _(_ _you have to)_ “—I don’t feel so good.”  
  
Prompto stared at him, silent, then reached for the collar of Noctis’s t-shirt, peeling it away from the bite wound there. They both hissed, and Noctis closed his eyes against the flare of pain and the new wave of nausea. “I thought you used a potion,” Prompto said.  
  
“I did,” Noctis swallowed again.  
  
Prompto was staring at him again, taking a step back, brows furrowed. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”  
  
What? How the hell was he supposed to know? Noctis merely shook his head, not sure how to answer.  
  
“There’s something off about them,” Prompto mumbled. Then he reached up to his earpiece, unmuting it. “Guys, you still having trouble finding us?”  
  
“ _Yeah,_ ” Gladio’s voice came through a second later. “ _We keep going in circles. Why? Everything okay where you are?_ ”  
  
Noctis found his hand clenching in Prompto’s jacket, knuckles whitening under his grip, although he couldn’t remember reaching out in the first place. All he could keep thinking of was _I been walkin’ in circles this whole time I been walkin’ in circles this whole time—_  
  
Prompto was still eyeing him carefully. “I think Noct’s getting si—”  
  
_I been walkin’ in circles this whole time—_  
  
“You were right,” Noctis muttered. “It knows where we are. It’s keeping them from getting to us.”  
  
Prompto blinked. “What? You sure?”  
  
That was why it was cold in here. It was that same coldness from earlier, chilling, sending shivers through him. That was why Ignis and Gladio could only walk in circles. But why? _Why_?  
  
_(please i hurt it hurts help me help me)_ The thought hit him out of nowhere. Because it wasn’t done with them yet.  
  
“ _What’s going on over there?_ ” Gladio’s voice cut through the cold and the pounding in his head and the sudden fear. He sounded afraid himself.  
  
“It knows where we are,” Noctis found himself repeating.  
  
Prompto swallowed. “Noct—”  
  
The door burst open, the lock flying off completely and sliding along the bathroom tiles.  
  
And the revenant came bursting in.  
  
“Shit!” Prompto had his gun out instantly, firing, as he tried to manoeuvre them both around it. “Come on! Go, Noct!”  
  
It was such a small space, such a tiny bathroom, there was barely enough room to duck and dodge under the swiping claws. Several hits landed on Noctis, tearing into his clothes and his skin, making him cry out.  
  
They had to crouch to dodge another, both of them dropping to the floor, watching as the nails slashed along the wall where their heads had just been, hard enough to leave grooves behind.  
  
He could hear Ignis and Gladio shouting in his ear, although the words were impossible to make out among the gunshots and the shrieking. He was almost glad they were stuck in their circle, their loop of rooms, glad they wouldn’t have to deal with this themselves.  
  
Noctis swiped his leg out, tripping the revenant up, and Prompto quickly shoved at it so it fell backwards into the tub, yelling, “Go, go!”  
  
Noctis scrambled to his feet, running for the door. He hit the wall of the hallway, whirling around so he could reach for Prompto and drag him out himself—  
  
Except, the revenant was already moving, knocking Prompto down, and he fell into the door—  
  
Slamming it shut.  
  
“No!” Noctis practically threw himself at it, slapping his palms against the wood. He could hear more shouting inside. He grabbed the handle, trying to shove the door open, but there was something stopping him. “Prompto!”  
  
“Noct!” Prompto yelled, from the other side, his voice drowned out by that shrieking noise, and then—  
  
And then it wasn’t on the other side of the door. The noises only came from his earpiece.  
  
“Prompto?” he could yank open the door this time, his heart in his throat as he stepped into the piano room. “Shit! Prompto!”  
  
“ _What the fuck is going on?_ ” Gladio snapped.  
  
“The rooms have shifted! He’s not here anymore!” Noctis ran his hands through his hair, digging his nails into his skull.  
  
The shrieking had stopped in the earpiece. There weren’t any more gunshots either.  
  
“ _Prompto!_ ” Ignis yelled.  
  
“ _Can’t talk right now, Iggy!_ ” Prompto gasped out, and Noctis’s head went light at the relief of hearing his voice. “ _This thing’s on my ass. I’m busy running here._ ”  
  
Oh god, it was still chasing him. Why Prompto? He hadn’t done anything, _Noctis_ was the one who’d taken the doll, that thing it seemed to like so much—  
  
The doll.  _(let it go)_  
  
Noctis let out a breath, backing out into the hallway. “Hold on, Prompto,” he said. “I’m gonna draw it away from you.”  
  
“ _No, don’t you dare!_ ”  
  
But he had to. He had to _(_ _make it stop)_ get that thing away from Prompto, otherwise it could _kill_ him, and there was no way Noctis could live with himself if that happened under his watch.  
  
He just wanted to get them out, he wanted to get them _all_ out of this damned house.  
  
He could still hear Prompto running in his earpiece, doors slamming loudly on distant shrieks—  
  
And then a cry, sharp and surprised and _pained_ , a crashing noise—  
  
Noctis held his hands out and summoned the doll from the armoury.  
  
“ _Noct_?” someone asked, although he couldn’t quite tell who it was over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. “ _Prompto! Someone bloody well answer me!_ ”  
  
Noctis let out a breath. Suddenly everything seemed so much worse. The darkness seemed thicker, falling in around him, barely broken by his flashlight. The air seemed staler, the silence felt heavier.  
  
It was there. The smell drifted to him first, decay filling his nostrils and making his nausea even worse. Noctis clenched his jaw, hands tightening around the doll.  
  
He had to go. He needed the others for this fight, especially with the way his head was swimming and he felt like he’d keel over any second. The scratches on his chest were a distraction, burning and aching, blood still dripping out.  
  
He had to get running, find a way to the others in this ever shifting maze.  
  
Prompto was gasping in his ear. “ _Oh god, I fell. I don’t think it’s following me anymore._ ”  
  
“ _Noct!_ ” Gladio snapped.  
  
The revenant made that awful, _awful_ shrieking sound, clambering down the hallway to get to him. Noctis knew the others could hear it, he could hear their own curses under the noise, but he had no time to answer them back.  
  
There wasn’t enough space in here, but he was hoping the distance between them would help anyway. He yanked one of the two flasks he had in the armoury, the ice spell cool and soothing in his hand, and he threw it, watching as it smashed against the daemon’s bloated shoulder.  
  
Ice exploded outwards, wrapping around it, crawling along the floor and up the walls. The revenant paused, screeching, moving as if it was trying to shake it off, but it didn’t look as affected as he’d hoped.  
  
It had slowed down though. Enough of a head start.  
  
He turned and started running.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
Prompto was going to throw up.  
  
Not only from the sheer panic running through his veins at being seperated from Noctis - Noctis, who was on his own and most definitely sick and being _hunted_ by a daemon - but from the sickening stench of decay filling the room. It was so strong, so potent, it made his head swim.  
  
It didn’t take long to find out why.  
  
He’d fallen through the floor. The floorboards, rotting pieces of crap they were, had given way under his boots and he’d _fallen through_ , landing in a heap in a room below, his arms scratched up from jagged bits of wood on the way down.  
  
It was weird. It looked like he was in a basement. Which didn’t make any sense, if the house was shifting around them all the time. By that logic, he should have just fallen into another room, but the hallway was still visible through the hole in the ceiling when he’d looked up at it to check.  
  
And now he was frozen, crouched on the ground, heart in his throat as he stared at the shapes his flashlight was picking up. At least now he knew where the smell was coming from.  
  
“ _Noct!_ ” Gladio’s voice exploded in his ear. “ _Answer me!_ ”  
  
“ _Think I’m losing it_ ,” Noct answered, voice a little strange. Strangled, maybe, and Prompto had a flash image of his pale face in the bathroom, the sweat turning his hair damp, the wound—  
  
The wound on his neck that had looked _worse_ even after using potions.  
  
“ _Prompto?_ ” Noctis said, and his voice was followed by the slamming of a door. “ _You okay?_ ”  
  
“Yeah, I—” Prompto swallowed. “I’m okay.”  
  
And he was.  
  
Except—  
  
Except he was surrounded by corpses.  
  
He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to think _what_ he could be stepping in. He couldn’t tell just how many there were thanks to how dark it was, but there were plenty enough for him to want to get the _hell_ out of there.  
  
It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make _any_ sense.  
  
Dead revenants laid at his feet. Their decayed bodies decaying once more, in various stages, some clearly older than the others. When he moved closer to inspect some of them, he thought he could see metal glinting at their throats in the flashlight’s beam. Necklaces.  
  
When he bent to check the newest looking body, curious despite his fingers shaking as he carefully plucked at the necklace, he found dog tags hanging from the chain, rattling against each other. It was incredible how such a small noise could sound so _loud_ in the silence around him.  
  
The name was scratched and old and faded, hard to make out in the flashlight. YNT KENNO.  
  
He’d seen enough tags recently to recognise what he was looking at. Hunter dog tags.  
  
God, he didn’t want to think about it. He _couldn’t_ think about it. Nearly every corpse around him had the same metal glinting near their throats. Drag marks stained the concrete floor, trailing from each body and into the darkness. It didn’t make _sense_.  
  
Near the back of the basement, away from all the other bodies, he found a skeleton, misshapen like the others. Old. Small. Too small.  
  
“It’s the god damn murder basement, I don’t believe it,” he muttered to himself, feeling almost hysterical as he ran a hand over his eyes, willing himself _not_ to think about it.  
  
He had to get out, he had to get back to Noctis.  
  
He stepped around the corpses and made his way through the darkness, following the drag marks, shoving the horror to the back of his mind as he reached the stairs.  
  
He clambered upwards and stepped back into the maze.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
Noctis yanked open the last door at the end of the hallway, stumbling out into another one. He didn’t think he could keep up the pace at this rate, already his lungs were burning and his body ached like hell, desperate for rest and for healing, and desperate for this to _stop_ , he just needed it to stop.  
  
He’d let the doll fall back into the armoury long ago, taking comfort in the fact that the others couldn’t reach it within his private little pocket of space. If they couldn’t access it, then they couldn’t pull the same trick he had, and they all knew it. It was the small things that helped.  
  
The revenant had kept following, bursting through doors behind him again and again, trying to keep up, but he could no longer hear it behind him. He kept shutting the doors with the insane hope of using its own trick against it, that it could be whisked away into another room as the house shifted, somewhere _away_ from him even if it was only temporary.  
  
He had no idea if it had worked, or if the revenant had simply stopped following for now.  
  
It didn’t matter. He kept going, sprinting through hallway after hallway, until—  
  
Until it wasn’t a hallway the door led into. It was a bedroom. Noctis’s breath caught in his throat as the door slammed shut behind him, already slipping out of his grasp from what had become an automatic movement. There was only one other door in the room, and when he dashed over to it, his heart sank. A closet.  
  
“Shit!” he snapped, then raced back to the door he’d come through, yanking it open. Maybe he could get to another door before the daemon reached him, maybe—  
  
It didn’t open out into the hallway. It opened into a closet.  
  
“Oh, shit. I’m trapped,” Noctis said.  
  
“ _What do you mean, you’re trapped?_ ” Prompto asked, voice sharp and desperate.  
  
“I mean I’m _trapped_ ,” Noctis snapped back, turning in every direction, but there was nothing left, and the movement made him dizzy, had the whole world spinning and turning. His legs nearly gave out from the sensation. “Any door I open is just a closet,” he gasped. “I can’t get out. I’m stuck in some bedroom.”  
  
And, of course, there were no windows. He could see where it was supposed to be, along the wall opposite him, complete with its own cushioned seat built into the wall. But there was only more wallpaper where the glass would have been, boxing him in and mocking him. He wanted to smash it up, tear a hole in it—  
  
Noctis blinked. “Hold on, I’ve got an idea.”  
  
“ _Be careful_ ,” Ignis said.  
  
He couldn’t promise that.  
  
Noctis yanked one of his greatswords out, wrapping his sweaty palm around the handle tightly. If he couldn’t use one of these doorways, then he’d make one of his own.  
  
He turned to the wall to his right, took a deep breath, then swung the sword with everything he had.  
  
The wood practically crumbled beneath the blow, giving way with loud, splintering cracks, wallpaper splitting apart under the blade. He swung again and again, tearing away at the wall until the opening was big enough for him to slip through.  
  
He was breathless by the time he climbed through, his clothes sticking to him from sweat. The nausea was nearly overwhelming.  
  
“You can—” he had to stop to catch his breath, doubling over to rest his hands on his knees, “I cut through the wall. Got into another room. So that’s a thing.”  
  
A pause, then Gladio said, “ _That could be a good thing_.”  
  
A shriek came from the bedroom behind him, and Noctis let out a frustrated groan. “No, fuck you! Fuck you, I’m gonna kill you!”  
  
He wouldn’t be quick enough this time. Any weapon he chose would be simply too heavy and his body felt too sore and weak for it, the room swaying from side to side with every movement. He stood back and away from the hole in the wall, glaring at the daemon, letting his hand form around air as he prepared to pull his final flask from the armoury, but—  
  
There was no space. _(_ _please make it stop i can’t stop)_ He’d be caught in the blast as well. _(_ _please let it end we must end)_ He would burn.  
  
Gritting his teeth, _(_ _let)_ he left the flask in the armoury. _(us)_ Ran for the door instead, _(_ _end)_ pulled it open—  
  
And ran straight into Prompto.  
  
“Oh, thank god,” Prompto gasped, then his eyes widened as he took in the revenant trying to claw its way through the hole in the wall. “Oh _god_ , come on!”  
  
His hand closed around Noctis’s wrist, and Noctis had no choice but to follow, stumbling along, feeling like he was struggling to breathe. He nearly fell, his legs giving out for a moment, and he would have stayed there if it wasn’t for Prompto still pulling at him and leading him along.  
  
He wanted to stop. He wanted to lie down. He wanted it to stop  _hurting_. “Please,” he gasped, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say _(i will not devour)_  and he knew they couldn’t stop anyway.  
  
They burst through another doorway—  
  
And had to stop suddenly as they came out onto a stairway, nearly colliding with the railing. Noctis held onto it tightly, struggling to catch his breath, peering over with a strange sense of vertigo. “Why the hell does it look like there’s more than two floors?”  
  
“You’re really asking that?” Prompto shot back. “You’re asking that about the wacky house?”  
  
“It should only have two floors,” Noctis said. God, his head was pounding, his skin was _burning_ , his throat and shoulder felt like it was on fire. He could feel the wounds from the revenant’s claws still hurting, still _bleeding_ , his clothes growing wetter, more sticky. His hands shook against the railing.  
  
“Guys, we’re at the foyer,” Prompto was saying.  
  
“ _Good, stay there!_ ” Ignis answered. “ _We’re making headway cutting down the walls._ ”  
  
“Okay. Noct!” Prompto’s hands were wrapping around his shoulders suddenly, keeping him from sliding down onto the floor. “C’mon, buddy, we gotta get down.”  
  
“It hurts,” Noctis gasped out. He reached forward, wrapping his hand in Prompto’s jacket. “It _hurts_.”  
  
Prompto was frowning, eyes and hands suddenly roaming over Noctis, gasping as his fingers came away coated in blood. “Shit! Noct, you need to use a potion.”  
  
He couldn’t think properly to grab one from the armoury, but it didn’t matter. Prompto was pressing one into his hands anyway, wrapping his fingers around it, and Noctis breathed out a sigh as he crushed the glass.  
  
Sharp pain shot through every wound, every nerve ending, throughout his entire body, and he doubled over from it, nearly throwing up right there on the floor.  
  
The doors burst open at the same time, and the revenant came crashing in. Noctis could barely get his wits together, flinching back as Prompto pulled his gun out and began firing.  
  
It happened too fast. The revenant’s arm slashed out, knocking Prompto off to the side, sending him tumbling down some of the stairs. Noctis tried to go after him, but the daemon was coming for him, swinging its claws until he was backed up against the railing—  
  
It lunged, collided into him, and he was sent falling backwards—  
  
Over the railing—  
  
Nothing but air at his back and stairs growing taller and taller.  
  
He heard Prompto screaming his name.  
  
Then something hit his back and—  
  
And nothing.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
After all the shrieking and the gunshots, it all seemed so quiet now.  
  
Everything but his boots pounding against the stairs as he ran down, his heart pounding in his ears, and the constant, “Oh my god,” that he couldn’t stop tumbling from his lips.  
  
Noctis had been right, there were only supposed to be two floors, and not nearly as many stairs. But in this whacked out manor, there were more. They’d been on the fourth floor, and Noctis had just fallen all the way down to the foyer.  
  
The _noise_ he’d made when he landed—god, Prompto didn’t think he’d ever be able to get it out of his head. A crashing noise, too loud, too fast, too hard. He hated to think it, but there was no way he survived that.  
  
And he could hear Gladio and Ignis, panicked voices in his earpiece, demanding to know what was going on, but Prompto couldn’t tell them any more than a choked out, “He fell, he _fell_ , oh _god_ —”  
  
There were too many stairs. He felt like he was racing down them forever, but he finally reached the bottom, coming to a stop when he saw the revenant.  
  
A flash of fury ran through him. It was still alive. It had survived the drop with no problem it seemed, if it was able to be moving around as if it was _pacing_. Waiting.  
  
Prompto glanced over at Noctis, heart suddenly in his throat, hand clenching around the railing. He was still on the floor, face turned away from him. Prompto couldn’t see if his chest was moving or not.  
  
“You piece of _shit_ ,” he cried out, and he dragged his gun back out, firing at the daemon no matter how pointless it was.  
  
The revenant shrieked at him, dodging out of the way of his bullets, coming for him with arms swinging, but Prompto ducked and rolled, opening fire once he had another opportunity.  
  
There was no escape now. There were no doors in _this_ foyer, in this crazy version of the house, the damned _Garland manor_. No front door to the world outside, no doors into other hallways, no windows.  
  
This was the final room.  
  
And still Noctis wasn’t moving, a black heap in the corner of Prompto’s vision. Even the slightest sight of him was enough to have his heart feeling like it’d been ripped out of his chest. It probably would have hurt less.  
  
The revenant was coming for him again.  
  
He barely registered the crashing noises as he rolled out of the way, still focused on packing as many shots into this bastard as he could. But, distantly, he recognised the sound of breaking wood, one of the walls being smashed apart.  
  
Making way for Ignis and Gladio.  
  
Ignis was barely through the gap when he threw his flask, and Prompto leapt backwards, keeping out of the way as it exploded.  
  
The revenant _screamed_ , flailing and trying to attack blindly as its whole body went up in flames, the foyer lit up in its orange glow. It spun in circles, trying to escape, unable to get away.  
  
Prompto kept firing. Gladio came into the fray, swinging his broadsword. Ignis threw his daggers at it, again and again.  
  
It wasn’t quite _enough_ though. The fire was soon dying and, though stumbling around, the daemon was still upright, still trying to swing for them even with its burning flesh and pained, choked cries.  
  
Another flask hit it, exploding on impact. There was barely enough time for them all to get out of the way of the blast, and Prompto’s breath caught in his throat as he backed up, eyes instantly on Noctis—  
  
Noctis, who was standing upright, if a little crookedly, chest heaving, hair sticking to his face from sweat as he watched the revenant burn.  
  
It was over. With one final swing, Gladio brought his broadsword down in a large arch, aiming for the daemon’s neck. Weakened by the fire, the blade sunk straight through, the head severing completely and rolling to the floor.  
  
Within the blink of an eye, the doors and windows were back. Gone one second, there the next. The foyer darkened as the fire went out, once again lit up only by their flashlights.  
  
Prompto didn’t care about any of that though, he didn’t care about the daemon falling still to the floor with a heavy thud, dissolving into back particles—  
  
All he could focus on was Noctis.  
  
He stumbled towards him, hand reaching out, although he didn’t dare to touch him anywhere in case he hurt him. “Are you _okay_?” he croaked out.  
  
Noctis was staring at the floor where the daemon had been, but his eyes slowly slid over to Prompto. “Been better.”  
  
His words were slurred.  
  
“Oh hell,” Gladio was there within a second, hands coming to rest on his shoulders. Noctis winced and flinched back, but didn’t stop him.  
  
Ignis was there too, face grim as he took in Noctis’s appearance. “You need a potion.”  
  
Noctis looked at them, hesitating. “I think…”  
  
“Now, Noct.”  
  
Noctis swallowed and nodded, pulling a bottle out of the armoury and squeezing it until it cracked and shattered. The potion seeped into him, meeting with his magic in a glow of light.  
  
Noctis cried out, doubling over. Falling to the floor.  
  
“What’s happening?” Prompto heard himself cry, reaching for Noctis even though there were already hands holding onto him and trying to pull him up.  
  
Noctis was trying to shove them all away, breathing harshly, his face hanging low. A trail of red began trickling from beneath his sleeve, curling round his fingers in jagged lines. When he looked up, fresh blood was welling from a cut on his head, running down and covering one eye. “I don’t—” he gasped, his words choked and pained, “It _hurts_. Potions _hurt_.”  
  
“What the hell’s going on?” Gladio growled, looking up at Ignis from where he was crouched next to Noctis.  
  
But Ignis was pale, eyes wide and shaking his head. “I haven’t a clue.”  
  
“My neck,” Noctis moaned. He began scratching at his collarbone, at the skin around his throat, “Make it _stop_.”  
  
Gladio was trying to stop him, wincing whenever his hand came away with more fresh blood from the various rips in Noctis’s clothes. “Noct, the hell’s wrong with you, stop it—”  
  
“His bite,” Prompto realised. “He’s trying to get his bite wound.”  
  
“His bite—” Gladio repeated, eyes widening, “You sayin’ that thing _bit him_?”  
  
Prompto could only nod, his heart in his throat as he watched Noctis’s almost delirious struggles. Just how long had he been suffering with this? The whole time? Why hadn’t he said anything?  
  
God, Prompto had been there in the bathroom with him, had watched as he took two potions already, he had _told_ him to use one. Hell, he had practically forced him to take one upstairs. Had he been making this whole thing worse?  
  
He should have looked out for him better.  
  
“It must be a poison of some sort,” Ignis said, crouching down beside him. He pulled at Noctis’s clothes until the bite wound was revealed, and they all winced. It looked _worse_ than what Prompto remembered, bruised and puffy and weeping, fresh blood welling up in it. Ignis cursed at the sight. “Noct, try an antidote.”  
  
Noctis shook his head with a moan, lowering his face again, shuddering.  
  
“Come _on_ , Noct,” Gladio said. “If you’re poisoned with something, an antidote will stop this.”  
  
He let out another groan, but did as he was told. He pulled out an antidote, breaking it and letting the his magic absorb it into his body.  
  
He made a choked noise, flinching back violently, his body jerking like he was about to go into a seizure. He pushed their hands away and tumbled to the side, falling to his hands and knees as he threw up on the floor.  
  
“Shit,” Gladio hissed. “ _Shit_.”  
  
Ignis moved closer, trying to support Noctis’s weight. “No more curatives,” he said, his voice oddly hushed.  
  
“But—” Prompto stared at them, feeling a chill of horror run down his spine. “He _needs_ curatives. He needs something to heal him and make him better, he—” he broke off, a new thought hitting him with the force of a sledge hammer.  
  
By the look on his face, it seemed like Gladio had been struck by the same thought. “But what about his magic? It heals him naturally, so what’s that doing to him?”  
  
Ignis shook his head. “I dread to think. But we need to find a solution to this, and _fast_.”  
  
Noctis’s hands were shaking as he tried to move away. He didn’t fight, however, didn’t resist as Ignis cupped his head gently with both hands, lifting it so he had to look at them.  
  
Prompto felt his mouth drop open, the horror turning into fear. He thought it was a trick of their flashlights, but it wasn’t. He hadn’t been imagining things in that bathroom.  
  
Noctis’s eyes were changing colour, both his irises and pupils covered with a dark, transparent grey. As if they were clouding over.  
  
“Get him up,” Gladio barked out. “We’re leaving.”  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
It had never been so relieving for them to be outside at night. Prompto barely had time to register the fresh air, the moon in the sky, the slight breeze; his every sense was honed in on Noctis and getting him to the car. Then it was the race to get him back to the motel, back to Dave, the Regalia practically flying down the road and away from the estate as Ignis drove at dangerous speeds.  
  
They had Dave on the line within minutes, all but begging him for answers and a solution, all the while with Noctis slowly losing lucidity where he was slumped against Gladio in the back seat.  
  
“ _The revenant bit him?_ ” Dave was asking, his voice coming through Prompto’s phone, cutting through the heavy silence in the car, sharp and concerned.  
  
“That’s right,” Ignis was the one to answer, and how he managed to sound and look so damn calm was beyond Prompto.  
  
Although maybe he wasn’t _completely_ calm. His jaw was clenched and his fingers were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, so hard Prompto thought he could hear the thing creaking and straining under the pressure.  
  
“Nothing will heal him,” Gladio chimed in. “Potions, antidotes. And at this point we don’t wanna risk anything else. It’s just opening his wounds further and making him sicker.”  
  
Prompto turned around in the seat, getting another look at Noctis, although he half-wished he hadn’t. The cut on his head was still leaking, and one half of his face was covered in blood, trailing down his neck and seeping into the neckline of his t-shirt. His clothes, while dark already, sported more darker looking patches. The sheen of sweat on his skin was visible even from where Prompto was sitting.  
  
His eyes looked worse. The grey a little lighter, a little more opaque. The skin around his eyes bruised and puffy.  
  
Dave, as if he could tell where Prompto was looking, said, “ _And ya said his eyes are turnin’ grey?_ ”  
  
“Yeah,” Gladio looked down at Noctis, tilting his head carefully with one hand to get a look at him. “And getting worse.”  
  
“ _Alright, I think I know what this is. Although there ain’t a lotta info on it and I ain’t seen it for myself before. I just know some hunters like to call it ‘zombie’._ ”  
  
Prompto stared down at the phone in his hand, almost wanting to laugh if it wasn’t for how terrifying the situation was. “Seriously?”  
  
“ _Crude name, I know, but it is what it is. Wish I’d known the revenant could cause the affliction, otherwise I woulda prepared ya’ll for it. It’s like I said, little info. It’s rare, ya see._ ”  
  
“A rare affliction from an even rarer daemon,” Ignis muttered. “What are the odds.”  
  
In the backseat, Noctis let out a hoarse chuckle, his head resting back against the seat and turning. “It’s cursed,” he said. His eyes looked feverish, unseeing, as he chuckled again. “But it couldn’t devour me. No devouring. It ends.”  
  
Gladio pressed a hand to his hair. “Take it easy, Noct.”  
  
“Never and never and never—”  
  
Prompto swallowed, forcing himself to look away. “So, what,” he said, “this thing stops you from healing properly?”  
  
“ _It’s like it reverses everythin’. Anythin’ meant to heal will harm the afflicted. Potions, antidotes. I dread to think what a phoenix down could do to someone in this state._ ”  
  
Gladio hissed out curse.  
  
There were low voices on the other end of the phone, Dave muttering to someone before returning to them. “ _I been told injuries sustained won’t be as bad as they could be and won’t kill him. And anythin’_ meant _to kill will have the opposite effect. Daemons with magic that can drain health or kill—that’ll heal him._ ”  
  
Ignis let out a breath. “I’d rather not have him face down another daemon in the hopes that it _may_ cast a death spell on him.”  
  
“ _I couldn’t agree more,_ ” Dave answered. “ _And ya won’t have to. Get him back here as fast as ya can, we’ll sort this out._ ”  
  
Once he was gone, the car fell into tense silence, broken only by Noctis’s ragged breathing from the backseat. Prompto turned again to look at him, heart clenching in his chest as their eyes met. “Hold on, buddy,” he murmured.  
  
Noctis’s lips moved, like he wanted to say something, but no sound came out.  
  
Prompto tried for a smile, knew it came across as more of a grimace. “Guess now we know how you survived a four-storey drop.”  
  
It was horrifying to think about. Noctis had fallen a height that no one could have survived, and the only reason he _had_ was because of some... _affliction_ eating away at his body. If that revenant hadn’t bit him, then he would be dead. He would have been a crumpled mess on that floor and he would be _dead_.  
  
He didn’t want to be thankful for something that was causing Noctis so much pain and suffering, but a part of him was anyway.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
The car screeched as it came to a halt outside the motel. Dave was already waiting there, arms over his chest as he stood in front of a wide open door, light spilling out into the night. Behind him, hunters were coming out of the room, empty buckets in hand, talking to him in low voices.  
  
Dave waited until they approached him before he unfolded his arms, stepping closer to take a look at Noctis cradled in Gladio’s arms. His mouth was a grim line, eyes moving up and down his form. “He has healin’ magic, don’t he?”  
  
“Yes,” Ignis said. “And I’m afraid it’s still trying to heal him.”  
  
“What’ll that do to him?” Prompto was afraid to ask, but he had to anyway.  
  
“It won’t kill him on it’s own,” one of the hunters spoke up from behind Dave, but there was nothing comforting in his voice. “It’s the blood loss you gotta worry about.”  
  
It was a horrible irony. Noctis’s natural healing abilities were going to be his downfall, twisted around by some affliction so that it was eating away at his body instead as it tried to mend him together, only opening his wounds further and letting the blood continue to flow.  
  
“How do we stop it?” Gladio bit out.  
  
“In here,” Dave motioned towards the motel room.  
  
They hurried inside, Gladio first, still clinging onto a barely conscious Noctis. He was about to settle him onto one of the beds, when Dave stopped him, waving him through the open bathroom door instead.  
  
“The only way to cure this is with holy water,” Dave said. The bathroom light was on as he stepped inside. He gestured at the bathtub, already full with water. “I had some of my boys hand over as many bottles as they could. Wasn’t sure how strong the revenant’s bite would be.”  
  
Gladio was staring down at the water. “So we bathe him in it?”  
  
Dave nodded, then motioned to a glass resting on the sink. “And make him drink it. Get him undressed and into the tub. But be prepared,” he glanced over them all,” He’s goin’ to be in pain. He’s goin’ to fight. Can you keep him in the tub despite all that?”  
  
“Damn right we can,” Gladio muttered. “Come on, get his things off.”  
  
It was awkward as hell, a nightmare, trying to undress Noctis while he was still held in Gladio’s arms, trying to pull things off as quickly as possible without further aggravating any injuries, but Prompto doubted he could stand on his own two feet anymore. He didn’t even seem to be aware of what was going on around him.  
  
His boots and socks were the easiest. Prompto yanked them off and threw them into the bedroom, uncaring of the mess he made. Ignis worked on getting his jacket and t-shirt off, muttering soft apologies at Noctis’s groans.  
  
They got him down to his underwear, and Prompto had to swallow past the thick lump in his throat. His injuries looked _awful_ , wide open and deep and bleeding still, stark red lines crawling along his skin. Parts of his skin looked bruised, other parts swollen a little. It sent a shiver through Prompto to see it all.  
  
The bite on his shoulder looked severely infected at this point.  
  
“Easy, now,” Ignis murmured as they began to lower him to the tub.  
  
Prompto was expecting the struggle, the cries of pain. What he hadn’t been expecting was just how _violent_ Noctis became, as if his body being submerged in the holy water suddenly brought him to life. He kicked and shoved at them, water splashing up the tiled wall and soaking their clothes. He yelled and cried out, pained and confused and angry.  
  
His cries rose to a scream, loud and hoarse, and his arms flailed as he struggled to climb back out. His hands scratched at Ignis and Gladio, trying to push them away from where they had him held down.  
  
The holy water, once clear, was quickly filling with dirt and blood.  
  
“No, Noct,” Gladio bit out. He had both hands pressed on Noctis’s shoulders, pinning him down into the water. “Stay in the tub.”  
  
Noctis’s voice gave out on him, his cries barely whimpers now as his head fell back, as his grey eyes stared up at the ceiling above. His hands, however, were still death grips around Gladio’s and Ignis’s wrists.  
  
“Here,” Dave handed Prompto the glass of holy water, “get him to drink this. I’ll hold his head for ya.”  
  
Prompto’s hands were shaking as he held onto the glass, so much that he was afraid the holy water would spill over the edges. He approached the tub, leaning over beside Gladio, feeling boxed in as Dave appeared on his other side to hold onto Noctis’s head.  
  
“Noct,” Prompto called, hoping Noctis was lucid enough to make this easy, “You gotta drink this, buddy. Okay? We’re gonna help you get better.”  
  
Noctis moaned and shook his head a little, lips moving, but he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on.  
  
So Prompto leaned closer and touched the glass to his parted lips, tipping it so the holy water poured inside. Noctis drank it down instinctively, then all but choked and spluttered, his face scrunching up as he tried to fight back.  
  
His legs started kicking again, sloshing water everywhere, but Ignis held him down.  
  
Dave held onto Noctis’s jaw with one hand, keeping it forced open as Prompto continued to pour the drink. Tears were running down Noctis’s cheeks, and he was making pained sounds in the back of his throat, but Prompto forced himself to keep going no matter how much he wanted to stop.  
  
He just had to keep telling himself. It was for Noctis’s own good.  
  
And before the glass had even emptied, Noctis slowly stopped struggling. He stopped making noises as if they were trying to kill him. He fell still, blinking up at the ceiling tiredly.  
  
“Alright,” Dave said, voice hushed. “The worst part’s over. Now we just gotta let him bathe in it for a while, just to make sure it completely goes away, but—I think we’ve got it.”  
  
They all let out heavy breaths, relaxing their hold on Noctis.  
  
“Thanks, Dave,” Gladio said. “We owe you for this.”  
  
“Think nothin’ of it,” Dave shook his head. “We hunters look after our own. And you killed that revenant, so you boys did me a solid there. I’d consider ourselves even.” He rose to his feet. “I rented out this motel room for ya, so don’t worry ‘bout findin’ another place to stay tonight. You good to take care of him now?”  
  
“Yes,” Ignis answered. He looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Thank you for this.”  
  
“Nothin’ to it,” Dave said. “I’m stayin’ next door, and ya’ll got my number if ya need me for anythin’. Give him an hour before you give him any potions, and make sure he gets some rest. He should be back to normal before the sun comes up.”  
  
Prompto couldn’t get his throat to work as Gladio escorted Dave out of the room, the two of them talking in low murmurs. He could only kneel beside the tub, letting his arms hang over the edge, his eyes on Noctis’s face.  
  
Ignis was beside him, crouched down on the floor and folding his arms along the edge of the tub. “What a night,” he muttered. “How are you faring?”  
  
“Can’t complain,” Prompto swallowed.  
  
“Are you injured at all?”  
  
Prompto shook his head. “No. Noct stopped that from happening.”  
  
“I’m sorry we couldn’t get to the both of you sooner,” Ignis said. “Believe me, we tried. I think Gladio was ready to burn the entire house down looking for you both.”  
  
“Hey, you guys couldn’t help it,” Prompto gave him a glance. “It was a really messed up house.”  
  
Ignis’s lips pressed together. “Yes, it was. Though I doubt it will be anymore, now that the revenant is dead. No one else should get lost inside that house now.”  
  
“It’s the little things to be thankful for.”  
  
Gladio set himself on getting their bags inside while Ignis tended to Noctis, getting their things settled and grabbing some fresh clothes out for them all. Prompto was left sat on the closed toilet lid, exhausted but not wanting to fall asleep, content in watching Ignis run a wet cloth over Noctis’s wounds.  
  
Noctis was practically half asleep through it, eyes cracking open to slits every now and then to look up at them. Whether he was any more aware of what was going on or not, Prompto had no idea, but at least his wounds were looking better, no longer bleeding and not as open as they had been. His bruises were fading, the swollen bits of flesh going back down. He no longer seemed to be in any pain.  
  
The bite wound on his shoulder didn’t look anywhere near as infected as it had. The holy water must have cleaned every bit of the affliction out of it.  
  
Barely an hour had gone when Ignis had Noctis use a potion, and they watched over with held breaths as the glass broke and the magic absorbed into his skin.  
  
He didn’t cry out in pain, didn’t flinch. His wounds didn’t bleed. Instead, they began to close up, knitting together before their eyes from the potion running through his body and melding with his magic.  
  
His eyes, when he opened them again to blearily stare up at them, were no longer grey, and they all let out relieved sighs.  
  
He would be alright.  
  
  
~ &~  
  
  
Noctis didn’t realise he was struggling against hands at first, not until the voice in his ear calling his name could finally be heard over the pounding of his own heart and the blood rushing in his head. It was all a blur of fear and confusion at first, slowly giving way to actual sounds and sensations, awareness coming through.  
  
There were hands wrapped around his wrists. Gently, but firmly, stopping him from lashing out. He was on his back, on a bed, a white ceiling above him. Everything was clean and _bright_ , lit up and friendly and inviting instead of that awful, pervading, stalking darkness.  
  
It was Prompto holding onto him, lying in bed next to him, hair all sleep mussed and eyes hooded. His expression was calm and patient. “You with me yet, bud?” he asked, gently, voice rough from sleep and barely a murmur.  
  
Noctis stared up at him, a little breathless. “Huh?”  
  
“You were having a nightmare.”  
  
Was he? He couldn’t remember. “Oh,” he simply said. He glanced over at the other bed, saw Ignis and Gladio both awake, sat upright with books on their laps and eyes trained on him.  
  
Noctis felt more than a little stupid. “Sorry.”  
  
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Prompto said. He let go of Noctis’s wrists, instead propping his head up with one hand, elbow resting on the pillow.  
  
“How are you feeling?” Ignis asked quietly.  
  
Noctis flopped back down onto the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m fine.” It was all coming back to him in quick flashes, the insanity of the night they’d had. He reached up, let his fingers trail across the skin of his shoulder, but there was no wound to be found. “That was real, wasn’t it? That house with the maze. The revenant.”  
  
A pause, then Prompto said, “Yeah, that was real. Wish it wasn’t.”  
  
“Damn.” Things were blurry near the end, but he could still remember bits and pieces. Killing the daemon, sickness and pain building alarmingly fast as everyone scrambled to help him.  
  
He thought he could remember being in the motel bathroom, but that was even harder to think about past the fog in his head. He was dressed in his sweatpants and t-shirt now, his mouth tasted like that mouthwash Ignis always made sure to stock up on, so they must have helped him with all of that at some point.  
  
He let out a sigh, running a hand over his face. “You guys okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Gladio said. “We’re good.”  
  
“What are you even doing awake?” Noctis lifted his head, reaching out for the alarm clock on the table between their beds. He groaned and let his head flop back down onto the pillow. “It’s after four in the morning.”  
  
“We couldn’t sleep,” Ignis smiled weakly. “So we were keeping watch.”  
  
Something must have shown on his face. Gladio shook his head, suddenly looking years older than he was. “You really took a beating this time. Do you remember anything about what that revenant did to you?”  
  
“I remember it bit me,” Noctis mumbled. He remembered a lot more than that, the screaming and the claws and the constant running. The fight at the end, the desperate need to get it away from his friends, fire flask in hand and heavy as iron when he struggled to throw it.  
  
“It infected you,” Gladio said. “Some kinda rare illness, like a poison. Only worse.”  
  
“Much worse,” Prompto muttered.  
  
He thought he could remember now. The car ride was a blur of pain and dizziness, but he could remember the conversation with Dave.  
  
He remembered thinking he had only been half-infected. The affliction had been fighting to complete itself.  
  
“I don’t wanna think about it anymore,” he said out loud. “Can we just put this whole night behind us?”  
  
Prompto flopped down beside him on the bed with a sigh. “No complaints from me.”  
  
He didn’t know how long he laid there, staring up at the ceiling, watching the fan spin round and round in circles. Prompto had moved closer, his hand coming to rest near Noctis’s shoulder, fingers brushing against his t-shirt as if to seek comfort, reassurance that he was alright, and Noctis didn’t have the heart to pull away.  
  
So he stayed there, listening to the scratching of Ignis’s pen in his notebook and the pages of Gladio’s novel as he turned them.  
  
It was hard to believe it was only after four in the morning. It had felt like they would be trapped in that house forever.  
  
And yet here they were, back in the outside world, safe and sound, with the sky beginning to grow lighter behind the curtains.  
  
“What are you writing?” Noctis murmured eventually, unable to stand the silence any longer, turning his head to look at Ignis.  
  
Ignis paused, looking up at him. “A report on what happened in that house. I found a few things of interest, and Prompto filled me in on some details. I think I may have the beginnings of an understanding of everything now.”  
  
“Dave would probably like to take a look at it when it’s done,” Gladio mentioned.  
  
“Indeed. It’s important the hunters are aware of such occurrences.” Ignis paused again, looking at Noctis. “I may need some details from you too, Noct.”  
  
Noctis swallowed. “Later.” Much later, when he was able to process it all and not feel like his skin was crawling with the memories.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Gladio sent him a fond look. “Sleep, Noct. You still look like hell.”  
  
“Still hotter than you,” Noctis muttered back, more out of habit, but the loud snort of amusement he earned had him smiling himself, a warm feeling fluttering through his chest.  
  
He rearranged himself on the bed, getting himself comfortable, and he didn’t protest as Prompto moved closer, instead appreciating the warmth of him nearby. Safe and sound and away from that daemon.  
  
“We’re okay now,” Prompto whispered, voice close to his ear. “It’s over.”  
  
Noctis closed his eyes. “Yeah.”  
  
They were okay now.  
  
  
~&~  
  
  
It wasn’t until the morning that he realised he still had the doll tucked away in the armoury.  
  
Noctis paused, still staring at the old, abandoned swing set over under a large tree. They were leaving any minute now, ready to get back on the road and find somewhere to take a few days rest, but the sight of the swing had made him remember.  
  
He didn’t want that thing coming with them, but at the same time he was hesitant to bring it out. As if touching it again could bring back the revenant.  
  
Which was ridiculous, because it was dead. They’d killed it, he had watched it burn with his own two eyes, and Ignis had said so himself that no such horrors should come from that house again.  
  
But he still had that doll…  
  
“Noct?” Prompto called from behind him, somewhere near the car. “Where you goin’?”  
  
He could hear them following him, three sets of footsteps keeping up as he approached the swings. It seemed like a nice place to leave the doll. It could get the sunlight on its face after having been trapped inside that house for who knew how long.  
  
“Something the matter, Noct?” Ignis asked, once they’d stopped walking.  
  
Noctis glanced back at them, grimacing apologetically at Prompto. “I still have that doll. From the house. It’s in the armoury.”  
  
Prompto groaned and Gladio’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not thinking of keeping it, are you? It’d be a weird addition to your treasure hoard.”  
  
“It’s not a hoard, it—” Noctis broke off before he could ramble, rolling his eyes up into his head. “No. I’m not keeping it.”  
  
He didn’t want to touch it again, but he would feel better leaving it behind.  
  
So he held his hands up, pulling it out of the armoury, letting his fingers close around its tattered, dusty dress. It looked even dirtier out in the daylight, empty grey eyes staring up at him, blonde curls faded and worn.  
  
He put it down on the grass, resting against one of feet of the swing set, watching as the shadows of the tree above flittered over its face and dress. It looked peaceful there. A final resting place for it.  
  
But when the leaves moved out of the way, letting the sunlight spill through and down onto the doll, its body turned dark grey, as if it’d been burnt, as if it was crumbling into ash. Noctis blinked, watching as the entire doll was enveloped, the dress, the face, the hair, all of it consumed.  
  
It dissolved into black particles, wisps of smoke evaporating until the doll vanished completely without a trace.  
  
“Now it’s over,” Ignis murmured.  
  
Noctis let out a breath, backing away into the sunlight. “Come on,” he said to the others. “Let’s go.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Confession time: This entire fic was just 100000k of setup simply for that last bit of Noct whump. ZERO REGRETS.
> 
> For any curious, while I know there are revenants in previous FF games, I decided to go with some actual mythology/folklore on this one as well. I mashed up a few things from revenants and draugrs, although there are actually only a few hints of that stuff lol.
> 
> I know I might have left a few mysteries behind. There are answers, but I'm leaving it to your imaginations ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!! <3
> 
> You can find me [here](http://ivorydice.tumblr.com/) at tumblr.


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